Jay Carney Beclowns Himself Once Again

We get it. Your job as White House press secretary, should you choose to accept it, is to put as positive a spin as possible for the president where the issues of the day are concerned.

But there are ways to do that which entail preserving some of your credibility and basic humanity – and that of the official you’re the mouthpiece for – and ways not to.

One would imagine that when you’re asked about things which don’t go well you might be advised to shrug a little and say, “Hey, this stuff is hard. Sometimes it doesn’t work.”

For example, there was the Obama campaign speech in Boston Sunday where he taunted the locals about the White Sox getting Kevin Youkilis – and reaped the expected reward…

Even Obama admitted he’d screwed up the vibe in the hall with that crack, and he apologized.

Fast forward to today, when Carney was asked about the gaffe at the daily press briefing and this was his response…

“Anyone who was in that room last night knows that the preponderance of people shouting in response to what the president said about Kevin Youkilis were saying ‘Yook’ and not ‘Boo,’ for God’s sake,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney, himself a Red Sox fan.

Maybe they were yelling “Goof,” Carney. Maybe it was directed at you.

A good press secretary would have been ready with a “self-deprecating” quip about things a leader must never do – like fight a land war in Asia, or make jokes about Red Sox fans in Boston.

Carney is not a good press secretary. And among the reasons he’s not is this thin-skinned, humorless arrogance.

This will get worse by the time the election arrives. And Carney has already lost the respect of the White House press corps. This came on Thursday…

UPDATE: Allahpundit’s take…

No, actually, I’m pretty sure the preponderance of people there knew that they were booing, in part because Obama acknowledged that they were booing. That’s the only wrinkle that makes this clip interesting, in fact: Despite O conceding at the time that the crowd was hooting at him for teasing them about the Youkilis deal, Carney’s shill discipline is so strong that he’s willing to contradict his own boss in order to push the most flattering (albeit unrealistic) spin. He could have dismissed the media’s dumb questions about this by laughing it off and saying that O likes to have fun with the donors who’ve come to see him, but no. As soon as a reporter brought up the idea of the president being booed, Pavlov’s bell rang, Carney started to drool, and he lurched for the “of course the president wasn’t being booed!” spin. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz couldn’t have done it any better. I hope The One gave him a biscuit afterward.

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